A singular collection of responses to the still life paintings of acclaimed artist David Garneau

Dark Chapters brings together 17 poets, fiction writers, curators, and critics to engage with the works of David Garneau, the Governor General’s Award-winning Métis artist. Featuring paintings from Garneau’s still life series “Dark Chapters” alongside poetry, fiction, critical analysis, and autotheory, the book includes contributions from Fred Wah, Paul Seesequasis, Jesse Wente, Lillian Allen, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Larissa Lai, Susan Musgrave, and more.

A nod to the Reports of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in which Justice Murray Sinclair describes the residential school system as “one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in our nation’s history,” Garneau’s still life paintings combine common objects (books, bones, teacups, mirrors) and less familiar ones (a Métis sash, a stone hammer, a braid of sweetgrass) to reflect the complexity of contemporary Indigenous experiences. Provocative titles like “Métis in the Academy” and “Smudge Before Reading” invite consideration of the mixed influences and loyalties faced by Indigenous students and scholars. Other paintings explore colonialism, vertical and lateral violence, Christian influence on traditional knowledge, and museum treatment of Indigenous belongings.

Rooted in Garneau’s life-long engagement at the intersections of visual art and writing, Dark Chapters presents a multifaceted reflection on the work of an inimitable, unparalleled artist.

Includes contributions from Arin Fay, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Cecily Nicholson, David Howes, Dick Averns, Fred Wah, Jeff Derksen, Jesse Wente, John G. Hampton, Clarissa Lai, Lillian Allen, Paul Seesequasis, Peter Morin, Rita Bouvier, Susan Musgrave, Tarene Thomas, and Trevor Herriot.

Arin Fay is a curator living near Kaslo, British Columbia. Her areas of special interest include publications, curatorial writing, and advocating for art and artists. An active member of the arts and culture community in the Kootenay region for thirty years, as an artist, volunteer, board member and curator. Arin is currently the Curator at the Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery (NMAG).

Arin Fay's profile page

Nic Wilson (they/he) is an artist and writer who was born in the Wolastoqiyik territory known as Fredericton, New Brunswick in 1988. Their work often engages time, queer lineage, decay, and the distance between art practice and literature. Their writing has appeared in BlackFlash Magazine, Peripheral Review, NORK, C Magazine, and Border Crossings. Their book of essays Colossal Equine Statue was published by ARP Books in 2024.

Nic Wilson's profile page

David Garneau is a Métis painter, writer, curator, and educator who creates metaphorical still life paintings. Based on Treaty 4 lands, Saskatchewan, David Garneau is one of Canada’s foremost Métis artists, painters, and public intellectuals, who has been leading the charge in complex conversations around the nuances of Métis identity and the politics of Indigeneity, Indigenization, and non-colonial aesthetics in the colonized lands of Canada. He is the winner of the 2023 Governor General’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual and Media Arts.

David Garneau's profile page

“A smart collection of art and essays, Dark Chapters activates deep conversations about art, resistance, and sovereignty. Visiting with paintings by Métis artist David Garneau, seventeen poets, curators, and thinkers offer complex provocations that trouble and activate new forms of communities and relationships.” —Dr. Carmen Robertson, Canada Research Chair in North American Indigenous Visual and Material Culture

“Provocative, probing, and precarious, Dark Chapters pairs the poetic, literary, political, and critical responses of seventeen authors with the deceptively uncluttered yet gravid and combustible still lifes of David Garneau. This collection of pictures and words undertakes a necessary examination of the uncanny oppositions and disquieting literal and symbolic inversions that signify and animate the Indigenous history of Canada.” —Bonnie Devine

“Dark Chapters is a lesson in relationality and innovation. Built through conversations between Garneau’s work and artists/writers, the intergenerational contributors to this book come together in relation to Garneau and his still lives to explore the important contribution the artist has made to Canadian, Indigenous, and International art.” —Erin Sutherland